June 2020
Beginner to intermediate
368 pages
7h 23m
English
In the early 2000s, it was common for games to take an animation that was authored in a 3D content creation tool such as Blender or Maya, play back the animation, and sample the transform of every joint in the animation at set intervals. Once the animation was sampled, the game's runtime linearly interpolated between the sampled frames.
While this works (and is doable with glTF files), it's not the most accurate way to play back animations. It wastes memory by including frames that don't actually need to exist. In a 3D content creation tool, animations are created using curves, such as the one shown in the following screenshot:
Figure 8.1: The Blender 3D curve editor
Modern games and animation ...